The Prehistory Myths
Written accounts of the time before the creation of Orthonia and its planes are, understandably, extremely vague. Most of the knowledge of this time comes from accounts of deities (particularly from Mashaelas, as fitting for the Scribe Goddess) but unfortunately many of the collected records don't agree with each other, or are even self-contradictory. But, as Mashaelas is known to often say, "the truth is more complicated than you mortals could even imagine"; the records are not considered wrong, just outside the reckoning of mortal beings. Thus, the Argent Scholars did their best to cobble together a unified prehistoric myth, which covers important events from the birth of the deities up until the Blossoming of the World, where the first true historic records begin. The Primordial War and the Realization of the Deities Long before the mortal races lived in Orthonia, or even before the deities existed, there were two main tribes of beings: the Alyton, and the Orasi. The Orasi originated from the Inner Planes, while the Alyton originated from the Spirit Realm, and both laid claim to the Material Plane as part of their domains; thus, they had always been at war with each other. The leader of the Orasi, named Ruk, became more and more corrupt as the war dragged on, while the eighteen Alyton primarchs remained resolute. Eventually, a large proportion of the Orasi rebelled against Ruk's rule, causing him to gather his remaining loyal followers to launch a final assault against the Alyton. The Alyton primarchs banded together and combined their power to slay Ruk, and in the process became Orthonia's deities. But in his death throes Ruk laid a powerful curse on the Alyton, inflicting many of them, including the deities, with the same corruption that consumed him. The Alyton prevailed over the Orasi, but at a great price; the Material Plane was theirs, but Ruk's corruption had weakened them to the point of being unable to colonize there. So, the deities created small vestiges of themselves as new races to populate the plane, with the intention of making them stewards to maintain the land while they cleanse their corruption. Over time, the deities began to adapt to the corruption. Some of them overcame it completely, leaving no lasting damage on their personalities and virtues. A few of them learned to cope with it, and though they could not remove it completely they found methods of keeping it in check. But others were completely consumed by the corruption, scarring their minds permanently and leaving them with a desire to spread it among the other deities. As a precautionary measure, the deities who resisted the corruption split the Spirit Realm into many pieces, now calling them the Outer Planes. They created celestial guardians to fend off the corruption from their domains, while the corrupted deities in turn created fiends to serve in their armies. The Orasi were not completely wiped out during the war, and their modern-day descendants are Orthonia's dragons. The deities honored the Orasi who rebelled against Ruk and gave them a shimmering metallic appearance to signify their virtue, becoming the first metallic dragons. The surviving followers of Ruk retreated and their scales became opaque, so their brood became known as chromatic dragons. Though the Alyton who returned to the Spirit Realm with the deities went on to become the first celestials and fiends, many stayed behind on the Material Plane. The descendants of these Alyton are known as the fey, and those who descended from the corrupted Alyton still carry the blight with them today. The Creation of the Mortal Races Prehistory of the Dwarves The dwarves were the first mortal race to be created, with their birthplace generally accepted to be nestled in Tromar's Fingers, a mountain ridge in northern Valorith. Their primary creators were Tromar and Orenna. Prehistory of the Humans The humans were the second mortal race to be created, with their birthplace thought to be in the marshy plains of southern Valorith. Prehistory of the Elves The elves were the third mortal race to be created, with their birthplace told as being in the temperate rainforests of northern Nionor. Prehistory of Other Races The other mortal races of Orthonia do not have such detailed prehistoric origins, so it's a fair bit more unclear how these races came to be, at least relative to the three described above. It is known that Tromar and Orenna created the halflings around the same time as the dwarves, though the exact timing of this is unclear. It is sometimes theorized that halflings were created as a sort of "prototype human" race, inheriting the short stature of their dwarven predecessors while also taking on a less-stocky build, common to other races. This theory isn't always taken seriously however, especially by halfling scholars, and the deities themselves don't seem keen on shedding light on this. The origin of gnomes is still wildly up for debate in most academic circles, given that they had only recently been recognized as a discrete race. The most popular hypothesis is that they had been created shortly after the elves, just as the first fey began settling southern Nionor, and that the modern gnomes are the descendants of interbreeding between the young race and these fey. This hypothesis neatly explains the gnomes' natural fey-like tendencies, but glosses over whether or not such interbreeding could even have been possible. The origins of planetouched races are less storied than those of other races - it's almost unanimously thought that they first rose from interactions between outsiders and mortals, shortly after the Blossoming of the World. Thus, their place in the cosmic hierarchy isn't well established, though the fact that planetouched clerics, oracles, and other favored souls are known to exist lends some credence to the idea that they are perhaps not "living blasphemes in the eyes of the Divines", as some early anti-planetouched crusaders liked to claim. It's unknown whether all planetouched races arose at around the same time, but this idea is considered unlikely by most. Dragonborn are the most controversial of all; it's very much taboo to even bring them up in an academic setting, outside the context of the mere fact that they exist. The implications of dragons, or even primordial Orasi, being able to sire a race could put a lot of preexisting theories on the origins of mortals on shaky ground, so until their understandings of pre-Blossoming prehistory is more concrete, most academics on the subject turn a blind eye to them. The dragonborn themselves don't have much to contribute to the debate - each tribe has a different myth explaining their origins, with such myths even differing among members of the same dragonborn subrace. For now, the dragonborns' origins are shrouded in mystery.